Great Porter Square: A Mystery. Volume 3. Farjeon Benjamin Leopold

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and as Mrs. Holdfast stepped towards it, Fanny pulled her dress. Mrs. Holdfast snatched her dress away impatiently, without speaking, and walked to her carriage, Fanny following her.

      “If you please, ma’am,” said Fanny.

      “What do you want? What do you want?” cried Mrs. Holdfast.

      “I want to speak to you,” said Fanny.

      “Well, speak!” exclaimed Mrs. Holdfast. “Don’t you see I’m in a hurry?”

      A coachman stood at the carriage door to wait upon his mistress.

      “I want to speak to you alone, please,” said Fanny.

      “You can’t,” cried Mrs. Holdfast. “Take this beggar-girl away.”

      The coachman endeavoured to obey the order, but little Fanny was too quick for him. She slipped between his arms, and again stood by the side of Mrs. Holdfast.

      “Ain’t you Mrs. Holdfast?” she asked, looking up into the lady’s face.

      “Yes,” was the reply.

      “Mrs. Grace Holdfast,” said Fanny, as bold as brass. I think it would be difficult to find her equal.

      Mrs. Holdfast, as she heard this name, Grace, which Fanny spoke loudly, gave a scream, and seizing Fanny by the arm, hurried back with her into the house. There were servants standing about, but Mrs. Holdfast took no notice of them; she put her hand on Fanny’s lips, and dragged her into an empty room. Closing the door, and locking it, she bent down to Fanny and shook her roughly.

      Fanny did not speak or scream, but twisted herself as soon as she could from Mrs. Holdfast’s grip, and said,

      “There! You have made my wig all crooked.”

      Heaven only knows where this child got her wits from, but if she had been drilled for a month she could not have acted the spirit of her part with greater cleverness. The words I did not teach her; I simply told her what I wanted her to do, and left the rest to herself.

      “There!” she cried. “You have made my wig all crooked.”

      And she ran to the looking-glass and set it straight again. There must have been something in her manner which made Mrs. Holdfast laugh, but as Fanny described it, her laugh was broken off in the middle.

      “Come here directly,” said Mrs. Holdfast.

      Fanny obeyed. Mrs. Holdfast knelt upon the ground, and, holding Fanny’s face between her hands, looked long and hard at her.

      “I don’t know you,” she said; and then she coloured up, for she saw that Fanny was returning the earnest gaze.

      “If you please, my lady,” said Fanny, “I beg your pardon for calling you Grace; my sister said you wouldn’t like it, but you were running away, and I couldn’t help it.”

      “Who is your sister?” asked Mrs. Holdfast.

      And now imagine Fanny, instead of at once answering the question, fainting dead away. A real swoon? Not a bit of it. A sham, to gain time to study the ground of action.

      Mrs. Holdfast, at first, did not appear to know what to do. She allowed Fanny to lie on the ground, and although the child’s eyes were nearly quite closed, she declares that not a movement nor an expression of Mrs. Holdfast escaped her. I am entirely inclined to believe every word spoken by Fanny as she related the adventure. She says that Mrs. Holdfast looked at her for a moment, then turned away for a moment, then looked at her again, as though wishing that she was dead. Upon which Fanny gave a sigh, and murmured something about being faint and hungry.

      Mrs. Holdfast rang a bell, and going to the door, unlocked it, and spoke to a servant, from whom she received a decanter of wine. She locked the door again, and returning to Fanny, raised the child’s head, and put the decanter to her lips. Fanny allowed herself gradually to recover, and presently opened her eyes, and struggled to her feet.

      “Now,” repeated Mrs. Holdfast, “who is your sister, and what has brought you here?”

      CHAPTER XXXIII

      IN WHICH BECKY NARRATES HOW FANNY BECAME ACQUAINTED WITH MRS. LYDIA HOLDFAST

      BY this time Fanny had invented a cunning little story.

      “If you please, my lady,” she replied, “my sister is an actress, and I’ve come here to ask you to help me.”

      “But you don’t know me; you’ve never spoken to me before,” said Mrs. Holdfast.

      “I’ve never spoken to you,” said Fanny, “but I remember you well. You used to go to the theatre in the country, where Nelly was engaged. That’s the reason she sent me to you.”

      “Is Nelly your sister?”

      “Yes, my lady. She was in the front row, and I used to come on in the crowd. I got a shilling a night, and Nelly had a pound a week. We lived near you in Oxford, and often saw you pass. Nelly was always talking of you, and saying how beautiful you were, and what a lady, and how lucky to have such swell friends. She used to wish she was like you, and when you went away she wondered where you had gone to. Well, things got bad, and Nelly and I came to London a month ago; and now she has left me, and I don’t know what I am to do.”

      “Why didn’t your sister take you with her?” asked Mrs. Holdfast.

      “She could tell you; I can’t, except that she said two’s company and three’s none. She said yesterday morning, ‘I’m off, Dot; I can’t stand this any longer. No engagement and no money. You must look after yourself, Dot. I tell you what to do if you’re hard up. You go to this address’ – (and she gave me the address of your house) – ‘and ask for Mrs. Holdfast. Don’t say Grace Holdfast – she mightn’t like it – and say I knew her in Oxford, and ask her to help you. She’ll do it. She’s got a kind heart, and knows what it is to be unfortunate.’ Well, that’s all – except that in the afternoon a gentleman came, and asked for Nelly. She goes down to him, and I hear what they say. It ain’t much. ‘Are you ready?’ the gentleman asks. ‘Oh, yes,’ says Nelly, in a kind of saucy way, ‘I’m ready enough.’ Then Nelly asked him for some money, and he gave her a sovereign. She runs up to me, whips on her hat, kneels down, kisses me, puts the sovereign in my hand, and says, ‘Good-bye, Dot, I can’t help leaving you; what’s the use of stopping here to starve? Get away from this house as soon as you can, for there’s rent owing that I can’t pay. Mrs. Holdfast will give you a lift if you want one.’ She kisses me quick, over and over again, and runs down stairs, and out of the house. Well, I’m crying and the landlady comes in and asks, sharp, where Nelly has gone, and when I tell her, she flies into a passion, and says there’s three weeks’ rent owing, besides other money. My hand is shut tight, with the sovereign in it, and the landlady must have seen it through my fingers, for she tries to force them open, but she can’t till she digs her knuckles into the back of my hand, when, of course, the sovereign rolls out. ‘Oh,’ says the landlady, ‘your sister’s left this on account. All right; I hope she’ll pay the rest when she comes back.’ She pockets the sovereign, and this morning she turns me out of the house, and tells me she has let the room. So I am obliged to go, and I didn’t know what else to do except to come to you.”

      I am not in a position to describe the exact effect this story, as related by Fanny, produced upon Mrs. Holdfast. For my part, I was amazed at the child’s ingenuity. I doubt whether she СКАЧАТЬ